QED Quarterly – Issue 1, Autumn 2018

A note from Nigel Morris, Managing Partner

QED Investors partners, companies, and friends:

I’m excited to share our first QED Quarterly, a newsletter featuring news on QED Investors and our portfolio companies. Please encourage people you think would be interested to join our mailing list. We appreciate your support and interest and welcome suggestions for future editions.

Warm regards,
Nigel and the QED team

QED raises its largest ever fund in 2018

In July of 2018, QED closed our fifth venture investment fund with $175 million in total commitments to invest in the US, UK, and Latam. This latest fund represents a major milestone, as it is both our largest fund to date and includes top-notch outside investors.

The new fund will allow us to continue to back amazing fintech companies and provide best-in-class investment returns. We were very fortunate to have had significantly more interest from outside investors than we could accommodate, but the QED team ultimately decided to cap the fund given we have a disciplined approach and strive to invest in only the best early stage fintech companies. Notably, the QED Partnership remains the largest single investor in QED Fund V.

With this new capital, we can get back to doing what we do best – finding the most promising fintech companies and helping them crack the code in their respective markets. There’s nothing more fun than helping talented founders scale their businesses and with the new capital we plan on doing exactly that.

Growing the investment team

In parallel with raising our largest fund to date, QED has also recently grown its investment team with three additions who started in September: Matt Burton, John Crenshaw, and Laura Bock.

Matt Burton joined as a Partner and will lead QED Belay, our newly formalized founding stage investment platform. Additionally he is opening the QED NYC office along with Laura Bock. Most recently he was CEO and cofounder of Orchard Platform, a QED portfolio company, that was sold to Kabbage in April of 2018. Matt has been a passionate supporter of the fintech community in NYC through his meetup events, advisory roles, and angel investing. Before fintech Matt started his career in adtech, helping build Operative Media (acquired by Sintec Media), Admeld (acquired by Google), and LiveRail (acquired by Facebook). Matt is also an avid racket sport player and was a three-time Texas State Tennis Champion in his youth.

John Crenshaw joined QED as an Executive in Residence and will be advising portfolio companies in Latin America in the areas of analytics and consumer lending. Prior to QED, John spent 19 years at Capital One gaining vast experience in consumer credit, including acquisition of new customers and managing existing accounts in branded, private label, and co-brand credit cards as well as auto finance, personal loans, and mortgages. John brings considerable skills in driving growth and profitability in addition to general management across marketing, testing, valuation, collections, forecasting and risk and compliance management to our portfolio companies. He is an avid reader, competent chef, amateur photographer, and occasional runner.

Laura Bock joined QED’s domestic VC team as a Principal. Prior to QED, Laura was with management consulting firm Oliver Wyman where she worked with major financial institutions on topics spanning growth strategy, product design, operational efficiency, and risk management. Laura also spent time with the World Economic Forum, leading an initiative focused on bringing better financial infrastructure to emerging economies. Laura is part of our NYC team, and outside of work enjoys Ultimate frisbee, strategy board games, and live music.

Increased focus on building – QED Belay

QED has a long history of leaning into our portfolio companies to provide real help when times are good and more challenging. Over the past couple years more and more founding stage companies have partnered with QED that require significant up front capital and deep expertise across a very wide range of topics (marketing, sales, technology, data science, operations, regulation, risk, compliance, strategic partnerships, and capital markets). QED Belay is structured to help founders navigate these challenges by tapping into QED’s deep operational experience. Our QED Belay portfolio includes ClearScore, MotoRefi, WageStream, Lingua Franca, InsurTech Connect, and RegTech Enable. If you are interested in learning more please reach out to Matt Burton.

10 new companies join QED in 2018!

Through the first 3 quarters of 2018, QED has welcomed 10 new companies to the portfolio! These investments show the breadth of the Fintech categories as well as the geographic range of our investment. We are thrilled to have them on board!